Alt History
Jul. 1st, 2006 03:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clarentine[so]...I'm posting a new journal entry.
If you were writing an alternate history story, would you feel obligated to make the point at which your story diverges an important point in the plot of that story?
If, for instance, instead of shooting Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth shoots Mrs. Lincoln, would your story revolve around a historical difference directly attributable to that historical change?
I don't mean that the story should pick up immediately after the event. Rather, my question involves the effects of the historical anomaly. You could write about Lincoln's grandchild and the effect the shooting had on him...
...or would such a plot requirement seem, to you, unnecessary? Do you regard the historical underpinning as no more than setting?
As you might have guessed, my current set of subs on the OWW workshop is an alt history "short" (well, it's something like 14k long, but it's still not a novel), and I'm having a hell of a time figuring out why my subconscious/muse flogged me into writing this, and rewriting it, and combining two shorts into one, and rewriting that.
Gene Spears, an OWW friend and a dab hand with the alt history pen, thus far seems to like the way the story's put together. I still think it's lacking something (like a decent, coherent opening and ending). I need to spend some more time thinking about what the story is supposed to be saying, I guess.
If you were writing an alternate history story, would you feel obligated to make the point at which your story diverges an important point in the plot of that story?
If, for instance, instead of shooting Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth shoots Mrs. Lincoln, would your story revolve around a historical difference directly attributable to that historical change?
I don't mean that the story should pick up immediately after the event. Rather, my question involves the effects of the historical anomaly. You could write about Lincoln's grandchild and the effect the shooting had on him...
...or would such a plot requirement seem, to you, unnecessary? Do you regard the historical underpinning as no more than setting?
As you might have guessed, my current set of subs on the OWW workshop is an alt history "short" (well, it's something like 14k long, but it's still not a novel), and I'm having a hell of a time figuring out why my subconscious/muse flogged me into writing this, and rewriting it, and combining two shorts into one, and rewriting that.
Gene Spears, an OWW friend and a dab hand with the alt history pen, thus far seems to like the way the story's put together. I still think it's lacking something (like a decent, coherent opening and ending). I need to spend some more time thinking about what the story is supposed to be saying, I guess.
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alt.history.org
Date: 2006-07-02 01:41 am (UTC)TOO MUCH RAIN here in the NE.
Re: alt.history.org
Date: 2006-07-02 02:17 pm (UTC)What I'm trying to get at with regard to alt history is this: if you're not going to make the changes to the alternate timeline relevant to your plot, should you bother making it an alt history at all?
If the historical diversion isn't present in your story in some fashion, is it even alt history?